Social networking systems commonly provide mechanisms that allow users to interact and communicate within their social networks. For example, a user may be able to send a content item to one or more other users. Content items may be uploaded to or created within many social networking system contexts, such as newsfeeds, user profiles, user walls, group pages, event pages, private messages, email messages, comment threads, message chains, photo albums, or any other social networking system context capable of displaying a content item.
The social networking systems typically comprise a combination of this user-generated content as well as user interface content of the social networking system. These contents are collectively referred to herein as “data.” The data can include other information that is stored and then transformed into data that becomes visible (e.g., content).
Application developers commonly use graphical user interfaces (GUIs) provided by computing electronic devices to display data on client (“mobile”) computing devices. Mobile computing devices can be handheld computing devices, e.g., “smartphones,” tablet computing devices, and the like. The data can be fetched via a data communications network from remote server computing devices. In a social networking environment, for example, people rely heavily on the display of web contents through GUIs. The processing power of the remote server, the load of the networks, the complexity of the GUIs, and other factors can all contribute to potential deterioration of the GUI quality. It would be helpful to overcome such potential issues and maintain or improve GUI performance.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the claimed embodiments. Further, the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments. Moreover, while the various embodiments are amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the embodiments are intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosed embodiments as defined by the appended claims.